MANGA 385
the largest public comic convention in the world, although it consists entirely of a sales
fl oor for publishers and creators to sell their work. Much like comic conventions in
America, Comiket and similar Japanese manga conventions allow fans to socialize and
explore diff erent and diffi cult to obtain manga.
Manga in English
Manga was fi rst brought to the United States by the artist Henry Yoshitaka Kiyama,
whose Four Immigrants Manga was privately published in 1931 and featured comic
stories about his experience as a Japanese immigrant in San Francisco, California,
between 1904 and 1924. Kiyama’s work had relatively little impact outside of the San
Francisco Japanese immigrant community, and was quickly forgotten, but has been
rediscovered recently due to the book’s translation by noted manga scholar Frederik
Schodt.
After World War II, manga made its American debut with work by Keiji Nakazawa,
a survivor of the atomic bomb that fell on Hiroshima in 1945. Nakazawa documented
his experiences in I Saw It and the fi ctionalized series Barefoot Gen. Th e translation
and publication were coordinated by an all-volunteer group known as Project Gen, and
the result was published by small press imprints such as Educomics and Last Gasp
starting in 1982.
In the 1980s, following the popularity of imported “anime” (essentially animated
versions of manga) series such as Astro Boy , Speed Racer , and Battle of the Planets ,
American comic book fans and artists showed great interest in Japanese manga and
anime. Th e artist Frank Miller , who would later be known for Batman: Th e Dark
Knight Returns and the Sin City series, wrote and illustrated the miniseries Ronin ,
published by DC Comics in 1983. In the series, Miller tells the story of a reborn
samurai warrior who fi ghts a time-traveling demon in a decadent futuristic city. Th e
artwork is clearly inspired by Japanese artists such as Goseki Kojima, the artist of the
legendary samurai manga Lone Wolf and Cub.
At the same time, established independent publishers such as Eclipse Comics and
First Comics began to publish manga titles such as Lone Wolf and Cub by Kazuo Koike
and Kojima, Appleseed by Masamune Shirow, and other titles. Another new manga
publisher in the early 1980s was Viz Comics. Viz’s original publication lineup included
Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind by Hayao Miyazaki and Crying Freeman by Kazuo
Koike and Ryoichi Ikegami. Marvel Comics ’s imprint Epic also published manga,
including excerpts in their fl agship magazine Epic Illustrated , and ongoing series such as
Akira by Katsuhiro Otomo.
At the end of the 1980s, manga was a modestly successful, if obscure publishing
niche. As Eclipse and First folded by the early 1990s, the new publisher Dark Horse
Comics gained attention by publishing manga along with their licensed and original
titles in both the comic book periodical format and the graphic novel paperback
format, such as Ghost in the Shell by Masamune Shirow, Blade of the Immortal by
Hiroaki Samura, and eventually reprints of Akira and Lone Wolf and Cub.
